Fiction and writing -More lessons

Response # Two

February 07/2018

Stephanie Hodge

John Gardner, 1983; Basic Skills, Genre, and fiction as a Dream and Andres Dubus: A Father’s Story and the Habit of Writing. Maureen Dowd , Op Ed NYT, Uma

 “So what did you learn this week?”

 “More of the same. Some pretty disruptive material on craft and technique of fiction”.

“Details? “Let’s talk about your readings”.

“Ok, John Gardner continues to explain that there are no rules for writing fiction. In this new piece, he asks us to consider the question, if there are no rules then where does the beginning writer begin.    His take away are plenty:

? Characters are the mainstay of fiction and they, can only come from two places - books or life!

? Should not try to write without his basic skills of composition

? To begin to write, then start from the genre you know and like to read-choose a genre to begin.

? Genre crossing is behind the greatest literary art (invention).

? Fiction is an instrument of reality in order to express our intuitions of reality. That writers do not seek to self-express when they sit to write a story for effect. Self-expression come about incidentally.

? Main job is to create a dream like state in the readers mind and avoid the distractions from the dream -a notion where many rules are applied.

? While a realism's proponents job is to argue us to believe based on a series of details and proof, the fabulist or yarn writer persuades us to drop our objections...Fabulist writer i.e. tale writer walks us past of objections and wins our suspension of belief during a dream story being conveyed. While the realism proponent must bombard us with proofs, the fabulist writer can create dream like vision giving vividness to key moments that carry us without providing as many details as the former .

? A fictional dream is a common element of both type of writing. The job is to convince the reader that the events he/.she is recounting actually happened and or fabulist writer -persuade the reader that it actually happened (even when portraying a dragon as a man/girl).

? The tale writer’s job is to engage the reader in the absurdity of the lie or have the character tell the narrator or some poor person a lie and then argue him/her and the to believe it.

"His first point is a debate about talent, learning and democracy. He says grammar and fundamentals of writing are second to the art of writing. That talent can be marred by lack of fundamentals i.e. grammar, syntax, basic composition and so on. He says nobody can expect to write well if they had not mastered the fundamentals. I agree and the lack of democracy of writers has also been a serious barrier to the pool. A kind of chicken before the egg argument.  The lack of fundamentals has kept many a great story writer out of the game. The publisher middle type has been a barrier to the larger pool of good writer talent. He also says, and I agree, that a good story writer has an instinct about a human response or feeling.

" He makes another point about characters being at the heart of good writing. The beginning writer should use genres that they like to read. He says that attention to vivid detail are the life blood of fiction. And that the ultimate value of the fiction is in its morality. This is a key point. He is definitive about the beginning writer choosing a genre they like to read in order to start. He provides a few examples of popular literary genres i.e. science fiction, romance, fantasy, etc. He says that genre crossing fiction is similar to other forms of art like music -symphonies. The cross over is where the artistic innovation lay. The no rules apply to mixing genres if it work to write effectively and humanly - a good story (illuminate some moral points).

He describes writing systems as realism and fabulist. The realism fiction writer has a goal to tell a story as true and proven as possible (with excruciating attention to details) and this we can associate with this the new fictions - New Yorker etc. The second is the fabulist writer write non-realist - yarns, tale of fables. I particularly liked his explanation of a good yarn writers magic. He provided examples of Mark Twain’s huge fibs. He says that Mark twain tells outrageous lies but gets away with it because he can persuade the read to suspend belief to go along with the tale as a dream.

He says that in all three (although I could only identify two systems in his chapter as literary realisms and fabulist- tale, fable, yarn) major writing systems, the common denominator, is the precision to details i.e. believable place names - Cleveland etc. So even in a fabulist story, a real name place may be there to give it believability. A clue is provided. The realist’s writer’s work is to convince us to believe the story is true even if it is not. The realist writer (both type of writers are realistic) work is to convince us. A realism writer provides line by line documentation of excruciating details i.e. Moment by moment is is mainstay of all realism fiction. He calls this, verisimilar fiction, a fiction that persuades us of its authenticity through real work documenting. A tale writers job on the other hand i.e. Isaak Dinesen, also a realist, but one who can skillfully argue us into acceptance and persuades us successfully to suspend belief i.e. she says at one point “so an so said would never sleep again”- a blatant fib but we go along with it.

Realism writers are true to the real characters and detail and the fabulist writer is persuading us to believe his characters and the story is true. Such type of writing has one great difference -The realisms writer must authentically continually providing proof while the tale writer can do less so...but both provide a dream like state in the readers mind.

For my reading of the second writer - Andres Dubus: A Father’s Story and the Habit of Writing. I find the reading has provided a good example of well written tale and theory covering excellent writing techniques and disciplines to get effects.

In the “Habit of writing” one of his main point's is about a writer’s concentration and the discipline of writing. I certainly know all about the magic of concentration. It is priceless and that is why my running has helped my technical development work.

He is also a big proponent of Vertical writing. Horizontal writing is focused on amassing pages and words. When Dubus wrote horizontally, he said, he wrote convinced that fiction was created through aggregation. Vertical writing, in contrast, values depth over breadth. Stories are written when they are ready to be written; they are not forced into existence by planning or excessive drafting. He says, horizontal writing seeks to move across the page; vertical writing seeks to dig into the page, to value the building of character and authenticity over the telegraphing of plot..

For his writing in a “Father’s Tale”, it is essentially a story of faith, love and devotion. He says, the story shaped itself through the characters while writing - and that things were revealed through intuition. He says that while writing, he did not know where it would end. He started to write a story about a church going catholic man, who was sadly divorced and could not remarry due to faith. He evolves the narrative using techniques including holding back the central action until mid-story and has the man actually talk to God in first person to get effects. He changes the narration from narrative to first person and back. This is described by him describing details of his relationship with the local priest. Then, his daughter comes home and gets involved in a drinking accident and kills another man. She tells him but without helping the man. He is then faced with a real moral conflict. Does he cover up his daughter’s crime or does he tell the police? He chooses to cover his daughter’s crime up. The story then asks us when the daughter leaves the home and he is alone whether he did badly or good and in the eyes of his God. Has he lost his morality and in whose eyes will he be judged for making that decision? He did not have all the details of the story as he started but that the story and the shape of the story revealed as he was writing the characters. The story works dues to his use of first-person narration, the intimacy it generates, and the sympathy that follows during the long build-up to his central action.

  All good! 

https://www.mbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/AndreDubus_AFathersStory.pdf

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Uma NYT - Op ED Sunday past https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/this-is-why-uma-thurman-is-angry.html

Oh Yeah, before I forget. Did you read Maureen Dowds Opt Ed on Uma Thurman? What did you think? There was such a flurry on twitter about it. That it did not do Umas' story justice. What do you think?”

 “It kind of resonated. Isn’t it about trust and obligation to tell a representative and a not leading moral story? Uma shared her story as a trusted /privilege to the journalist. Dowd had an obligation to tell it as truthfully but perhaps she took liberties and told it to elevate her abuse to other women. I think that telling the story as she did was creative and elevating to the larger problem of women abuse . Did it do Uma justice? Well, on that point I am not entirely sure? She was the narrator of Uma's story as told by Uma and verified by others but she left many things open for interpretation. In Dowd‘s article, she choose to leave many things unspoken. Like about what happened in the room when she went to speak to the feller. The lack of clarity leaves what happened in that room up to the reader and their subjective inclinations, which may or may not be correct. Is there a moral obligation of the author not to leave out details with might do more harm than good. Perhaps she should have dished to the New Yorker - it presents things using realism -much linear, details and proofs. This was her choices, to leave some things untold, the ice berg effect..

Yes many people including other writer thought the way it was told was confusing?

If you read it closely, the facts are not confusing.